


Fathers

by writetheniteaway



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, I think?, Kelly!Kids, death mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 21:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2748125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writetheniteaway/pseuds/writetheniteaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A slightly alternate universe where Snyder is motivated by more than just greed, set after the strike and includes the Kelly!Kids! A chance meeting becomes a lengthy discussion that drags up memories Jack had long hoped to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fathers

**Author's Note:**

> It's incredibly sad, but not graphic or violent. PLEASE I am begging you comment on it. Let me know what you think/if I made any horrible typos. Thank you for reading!

I’ll hop a train, I’ll get all the way to Santa Fe ‘fore you even know I’m gone.  
Do you know what it’s like to lose everything, boy?  
He’d had a family, a beautiful family. Grace, his wife, his darling.  
Mary, their daughter Mary, she was the light of his life.  
Nicholas, and John. His boys, so full of joy, full of life.  
Mary wasn’t even ten when it happened…  
You’ll die before you make New Mexico boy, die with no family to buy your box.  
Nah, Snyder, that’s gonna be you. 

Twelve years he’d spent in jail. Twelve years turning moments like that over in his mind, those damnable children running amuck on the streets. The world’s backwards, Gracie, they lock the good men up and let the thieves roam free. Where was the boy’s mother, to tell him not to steal, where was his father to teach him to say “yes sir”? Where were his children to kiss him goodnight?  
“Daddy, hurry up!”  
He looks up to see a family, and he’s on the tracks careening back to a scene so familiar it robs him of his breath.  
Mother and daughter, the source of that first voice, leading the way. The boys with their eyes focused on the ground, searching for bottle caps and jacks and other such lost treasures. And the father, but it couldn’t be-  
“Will ya get the lead outta your boots, the groceries ain’t gonna buy themselves.” Jack Kelly calls back to his sons.  
“Jack. Kelly.” That voice still makes him want to run, even after all these years.  
“Boys come here!” Katherine says quickly and somehow they know, as all children do, when their mother means it.  
Before any of them can fully recognize what’s transpired Katherine has her arms around all three of them, holding them back and out of the man’s reach. There’s a look in his eye, one she’s never quite scene except once in Clara’s textbook, and it’s frightening her though she’d never let the children know.  
But Jack, Jack Kelly knows that look all too well. It’s the look of a lost man, a desperate man, needing to feel like he had control. Stomping on children and ignoring their screams, because as long as they were locked up tight nobody would ask questions. Nobody would think that a caring father could ever be so cruel. Nobody stands on a train platform thinking they will never see their families again.  
“What do you want Snyder?” Jack asks, and it isn’t a boy’s bravado but a father’s ire that gives him courage. The man before him has shattered a hundred lives, he will not destroy more. He will not destroy theirs.  
“So you and that spoiled brat ran off to live happily ever after? Ruined a family’s good name all for spite?”  
“You watch your mouth old man.” Jack closes the distance between himself and Snyder, keeping Snyder at a greater distance from his family.  
“ You don’t deserve a family, boy. You’re a thief, a criminal, a cheat-“  
“This ain’t about them, and it ain’t about me. Now walk away fore I make you.” Jack kept his voice low so that the children wouldn’t hear, but the threat was made all the same.  
“Still Mr. Tough Guy then Kelly, fighting for the weak,” Snyder mocked. “Poor us, little orphans, we’re hungry Mr. Snyder, we’re cold. Well you know what, boy, you were alive! There was breathe in your lungs and blood in your veins. And instead of being grateful, you insisted that you needed more. Well I’ll tell you what boy, I’d’ve let every last Goddamn one of you starve to get my family back. Every Goddamn one.”  
Snyder lunged clumsily, falling at the children’s feet. He reached up from the concrete and grabbed the hem of Ruth’s skirt. “Where’s my Mary? Why does he get you but I can’t have my Mary?”  
Ruth screamed as the man continued his tirade, and it took Jack only seconds to pull him from the ground and shove him further away from the children.  
“Don’t you ever touch my family again.” Jack snarled  
“You don’t deserve them Kelly. You never will.”  
“Clear outta here!” And by God given miracle the mad man does, scared off like a rabid dog when you bang a pot.  
“Ruth, are you alright?” Jack opens his arms for her to run into, and his daughter hides her tears from a world that wants to see her weak.  
“Was that Snyder?” Little Jack asks, his voice trembling.  
“The spider himself.” Katherine affirms their fears, hugging the boys closer to her. Jack could kill him for frightening them like this.  
“Come on,” Jack hoists his just on the cusp of too old to be carried daughter into his arms and gives Katherine’s shoulder a reassuring touch. “Groceries can wait.”  
*  
They’re home. They’re safe. They’ve got blankets and cocoa and Mama and Daddy and there ain’t no one in the world who’s gonna hurt them. Not ever. Ruth hasn’t let her father be more than a foot away since the scene on the street, and even the usually impossible to calm boys have been sitting quietly, barely murmuring the questions they have.  
“Did he really not give you supper?”  
“Does he always yell like that?”  
“Do you think he’ll come back?”  
A hundred questions they had no intention of answering until their children had grown up. Or at, the very least, until they weren’t so young. Snyder had already robbed him of his childhood, and Jack would be damned if that madman did the same to his own children.  
“Who was Mary?” From Ruth. The first she’d spoken since they’d made it home.  
“Mary…was his daughter.” Jack sighed.  
Katherine’s eyes widen, this was a part of the story not even she knew.  
“We didn’t know for sure, but sometimes he’d get real mean. Meaner than normal days. Get, get that look in his eye like he had today. Like he wasn’t thinkin’ straight. He’d talk about Mary, an’ Grace, and sometimes boys names too.”Jack took a breathe, took stock of their faces, made sure he could continue.  
“I found an old paper clipping once, said he’d lost all his family in a train accident.” Katherine’s hand covered her mouth in shock. “That’s why—why he was so mean. Cause he misses them so much he don’t know how to think straight.” Jack hugs Ruth tighter.  
“I ain’t sayin’ he isn’t a terrible man, cause he done a lot that he oughtta be ashamed of. But I don’t want you to hate him, neither. Cause he ain’t never gonna hurt you like he did us, I promise. Cause I don’t know what I’d do if anything bad happened to you three. Your Mama and me, we’d probly go just as crazy as him.”  
*  
They were safe in bed. Door locked tight. His family was alive and they were safe and if he had to sleep across the threshold to keep it that way he damn well would.  
“Jack—“  
“I don’t wanna talk about it.” He gathered up the empty mugs from the table and starting carrying them into the kitchen.  
“Jack look at me.” Katherine followed him, persistent. “It’s alright to be upset. I understand—“  
“Do you?” His voice was fierce but hushed, last thing he wanted was to scare the kids awake. “Do you understand what seeing him walkin’ free means? Means it ain’t safe for them to be outside, ain’t safe for Clara to be walkin’ around with her stomach showin’ how close she is to havin’ another kid. He don’t think straight, Katherine. He’s a greedy, cruel, crazy son of a bitch, and now he’s seen my family. Our family. Suppose they let him work in a school, hm, or open up another refuge even? You want him anywhere near kids, kids he can beat up on, and scream at, and starve just cause he can? You want him followin’ Ruth and James to school? We got him locked up, and now he’s free, and now it ain’t safe no more. Now I gotta go back to watchin’ my back every step I take, cause I’ll be damned if he’s ever gonna hurt them. Not our kids, or anyone elses.” He’s not sure when he started crying, but now that it’s started he can’t seem to stop.  
“Shhh.” Katherine soothes him the same she would her sons. “It’s alright, it’s alright.” He hides his tears in the crook of her neck, and she runs her hand through his hair, willing him to find his courage again. Willing him to take some of hers, because in this moment she had enough to share. “He won’t hurt them, Jack. We won’t let that happen. First thing tomorrow we’ll go to the police, we’ll tell them he’s a danger to himself and innocent people.”  
“Look at me,” she repeats, caressing his cheek with the palm of her hand. “We beat him once, we can do it again. He is never, never going to hurt you, our children, or anyone else. I promise.”  
Katherine Kelly stood guard that night. A mug of coffee at her side, her children asleep in their room, and Jack. Jack Kelly, father, husband, artist, union leader, dreamer… No longer the protector, the bravado, the brave face, but the hungry, scared little boy in the dark. Jack with his head in her lap and his hands tangled tightly with hers, afraid if he let go his angel might slip away.


End file.
